Battlegames 3

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Copy and advertising closing date for next edition: June 5th 2008

Let’s start with the bad news. The Royal Mail has increased its prices yet

again and so I’m afraid I’ve had to pass this on in connection with subscriptions and mail order purchases. In addition, I’ve been hit with a hike in warehousing and insurance costs, which has an effect on the storage of back issues, so the most logical decision has been to simplify

pricing, and all issues will now all be sold at current rates. Please refer to the shop pages (pp42-43) and the website for full details. Naturally, those of you who have already subscribed will remain unaffected until your renewal date.

Now, the good news. You’ll see that we’ve attracted more advertising again this issue, which has also enabled me to put the page count up again. This is as I’d promised, so please make a point of telling advertisers that you saw their messages here so that this happy cycle of growth can continue. While you’re at it, tell a few more companies that you’d like to see their products promoted in these proudly independent pages. It’s no secret that this stance evidently doesn’t suit all advertisers – no names, no pack drill – and I’m sure my bank manager would be happier if I just shut my principled mouth, printed advertorial and took the money, but I’m afraid I’m just not made that way.

I’ve been to a couple of shows already: Cavalier in Tonbridge in February and Salute at the end of March. Cavalier, a friendly show run by the Tunbridge Wells club, was particularly notable for the extremely kind donation they made after the event to our Combat Stress Appeal – my thanks to them for this gesture. And Salute, bustling and overwhelming as ever (congratulations to the South London Warlords team for their impressive organisation), was most notable for me having so many end-to-end, on-the-hoof meetings and conversations that I didn’t manage to take a single photo! No matter, I’m very grateful for the umpteen (I lost count) people who came up to me to say “hello”, hope that my leg is better (it is, most of the time) and tell me how much they like the magazine.

February was also notable because of an invitation to meet up with the Warlord Games team and a host of others at John Stallard’s house in Nottingham for a trial run of their forthcoming Black Powder rules. A good leavening of ‘The Nottingham Mafia’ (only kidding!) were in attendance in the form of the Mike and Alan

Editorial Contents

Cover: As evening draws in, the French left wing and Old Guard to the west of La Haye Sainte are stopped in their tracks – yet again – by the British and their Allies. This carpet of magnificently painted 15mm miniatures shows part of the Waterloo refight staged by David Brown, Eclaireur and a host of General de Brigade fans who travelled from all corners of the country – and from overseas! – to South Mimms on the M25, of all places, to take part.

Editorial 3

Have you seen my Neil Diamond CD? 4Diane Sutherland, UK

Forward Observer 7Mike Siggins, UK

Talking wargaming 1: artillery and the tabletop 8Chris Scott, UK

Waterloo en masse 10David brown, UK

Table top teaser 20C. S. Grant, UK

To boldly go 24Roger Smith, UK

Arsuf 1191 27Daniel Johnson, UK

Recce 32New goodies reviewed by our team

Events May/June 2009 40Richard Tyndall, UK

The Battlegames Combat Stress Appeal: update 41Our campaign to help support ex-service personnel continues

The Battlegames shop 42The place to order your subscription and much more Competition 44

Win a copy of Warhammer Historical’s TrafalgarBattlegames classified ads 44

Sell or announce your stuff here

Perry, Rick Priestley, Jervis Johnson, Alessio Cavatore, (all GW); Duncan Macfarlane and Daniel Faulconbridge (Wargames Illustrated, though Duncan has now retired); Andrew Hubback (Miniature Wargames); and Nick Eyre (North Star). Rumours that we plotted to overthrow the world are sadly wide of the mark – instead, we had great fun with a Crimean War game, followed by a pint and a curry! The rules, I concluded, are great fun, fast-moving, challenging and definitely ‘one to watch’.

And finally, in spite of being ridiculously busy (and I’ll be even more so, having just been commissioned to write a book), I’ve even played some more games! You can find out more on the blog at http://battlegames.wordpress.com/.

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4 Battlegames

Have you seen my Neil Diamond CD?The continuing tales of a wargames widow

by Diane Sutherland

I suppose I should have noticed that the CD case was light when I picked it up. I also should have realised that something was afoot when he asked me to pick up

an AOL installation CD and if I’d noticed whether Tesco had any CDs for their Internet service at the tills. Then there was the strange obsession with tropical fish. We don’t have a fish tank, so why is he buying plastic plants?

“Just a little Vietnam project,” he assured me.“Not Ia Drang by any chance?” I replied,

noting that he’d been watching We Were Soldiers Once and Young for the umpteenth time.

“So, have you seen my Neil Diamond CD?” I growled. Nothing gets between me and Neil Diamond, certainly not Mel Gibson.

“I don’t think I’ve stuck anything to it yet,” he replied cautiously.

bI must admit, the idea is an old one, a great way of getting rid of those unwanted CDs out of the Sunday papers and the profusion of Internet disks than drop through the letterbox. Add tropical fish plants, a hot glue gun and that’s all you need to make a jungle environment for your south east Asia wargames.

Games Workshop have a nice collection of jungle plants in a large blister set (£24.95), but it contains only three different types of plant, so you need to spread your wings and think laterally. EBay is a good place to look; exercise caution, as some of the plastic foliage is truly revolting, far too bright and garish and you shouldn’t need to go to the trouble of painting anything except the base. Large pet stores are favoured hunting grounds (also handy for finely shredded hamster bedding and kapok). Don’t forget to

try places that sell imitation flowers and plants: if you’re lucky, you’ll find 100 freestanding plants on a large square sprue for under £10. In fact, on eBay, you should be able to find a mat of plants for around £3 - £7, plus the postage of course. Just search for “plant mat” and all will be revealed.

Firstly, you need to do some knife work. Score the silvered surface of the CD to help the glue and the basing material to key to it. It’s advisable to score the playing surface of the CD for two main reasons – the label side is less likely to slide about and you’ll be less tempted to try to cram the CD back into the player at some point and spot weld the plastic plants to the innards. Not advisable, and certainly not a malfunction that is covered by the warranty.

Before we go any further, a few brief words of warning on using hot glue guns. Our glue gun is an old one; you have to push the glue stick into the gun and it takes a little while to heat up. Once it is up to temperature, the hot glue will literally pour out of the nozzle if you push the stick too hard. It is not a precision instrument and,

Our venerable hot glue gun, along with a pair of scissors (to snip the plant mat sprues), a craft knife to score the CDs and a plundered selection of ISP

installation CDs.

A selection of plastic aquatic plants and plant mats. Most are sold on a large sprue but can be pulled off making the construction of the terrain

much easier. None of the plant mats in this picture cost more than £7 each for 100 plants.

The evil deed is averted as the wargame widow delivers a pre-emptive strike to preserve essential assets for the ongoing campaign. Objective Neil is

successfully held by the forces of liberation.

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Battlegames 5

what’s more, hot glue is not a friend to human skin. Whilst peeling off white wood glue from your fingers can be a pleasurable experience, doing the same with welded-on hot glue is most certainly not. Neither are the accompanying blisters that attractive or desirable. Be warned, it’s a two-handed job wielding the glue gun, so prepare yourself beforehand. Also, be aware of the fact that the hot glue will continue to seep out even if you are not pushing the glue stick, so don’t be tempted to use it on a French polished tabletop. More modern glue guns are slightly more foolproof, with proper triggers and such, and even have their own stands, but don’t trust a glue gun not to deposit scalding sticky fluid precisely where you don’t want it.

Try to plan your jungle bases if you can. If you have been fortunate enough to find a variety of different plant styles, colours and sizes, you can vary the look of each of the CD clumps. Many of the plants will also come with bases. Do not discard them as they are your friends. Trim them down by all means and use the small plugs from the plant mats. The reasons for this are three-fold: firstly, even hot glue will struggle to secure a small point or trunk and you will need to hold the plant upright until the glue has cooled and hardened, which is clearly very tedious; secondly, the more plants you secure with bases, the easier the storage of the terrain pieces – you can simply unplug the plants from the CD base; and finally, being able to remove the plants from the CD after you have glued their base into place makes painting the CD a whole lot easier and far less fiddly.

When planning your CD terrain, less is often more. That is, unless you want solid thickets of plants that you don’t intend to hide figures in. Scattering a handful of plants over the base will mean you can deploy figures amongst them.

The central hole of the CD is an issue. We tend to use Games Workshop plastic multi-part jungle trees.

Although these are out of production now, there are literally thousands of them available on eBay or at Bring and Buy stands at wargame shows. If you have the choice, go for the coloured plastic ones. The trunk parts come in brown and the foliage in green. All you have to do is to wash them in soapy water, let them dry and then liberally slosh brown and green ink over them whilst they are still on their sprue.

Construct them using polystyrene cement (the type you use to put together plastic kits). If you can only get hold of the grey jungle trees, just spray the trunk sections with a mid-brown, then give them an ink wash or a delicate drybrush and a green spray for the foliage and green ink or a yellow drybrush. The alternative is to cut a small square of card and stick this over the centre hole of the CD or use any plants you might have found with large bases.

Now we have our plants in place, we can now turn our attention to the CD base itself. We tend to use the same basing mixture as we use for the terrain boards and the figure bases. At a distance, this means you can’t actually see the base at all; it simply blends into the overall colour of the terrain boards. We get our base brown mixed at a DIY superstore by the litre.

To get the right mix, we give the paint a really good stir, then fill around a third of a jam jar with the paint. Add to this some dry play sand (you can buy a medium sized bag from most DIY stores – don’t be tempted by builders’ sand, it’s got too much clay in it and makes the mixture too cloggy). Keep adding the sand, handful by handful, until you’ve got a porridge-like consistency. What you want is

Some CDs with a selection of plastic plants fixed in place with a hot glue gun. You can see the square of card over the central hole and the sprues of the plant mats. Scoring the CDs is just a minor precaution to help give the

glue and the paint a key.

Four finished jungle terrain pieces. The paint and sand mix has been added, then drybrushed and some static grass stuck in place with white

wood glue. You can get considerable variation with just a handful of different plant types and different ‘planting’ schemes.

Games Workshop’s original jungle plants, now out of production, but still in wide circulation in the second-hand market. These are the green and brown ones; they have simply been washed in soapy water (a hangover chore from painting soft plastic figures and not strictly necessary), then washed with

slightly watered-down Renaissance inks. You could also wash with watered-down dark green paint or simply drybrush. It’s much easier to do this with

the plant parts still on the sprues.

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6 Battlegames

a mixture that can be painted on without being too thin or too thick. We use fairly large, flat brushes to apply the mixture to the CD base. It will usually need a couple of applications; paint once and you’ll cover most of the base the first time, then leave at least overnight as it does take some time to dry. Then give it another coat to cover the bare patches. Make sure you also cover the edges of the CD; this will help it blend in with the terrain boards.

Once dry and before putting the plants back into place on their bases, give the brown paint and sand mix a liberal drybrush with white (we use Daler Rowney Cryla). Optionally (and particularly if you’ve still got some bald patches on the CD), apply some white wood glue and fix some static grass to the CD base. We use shades from Realistic Terrain, but the Army Painter static grass is very good as are the ranges from several of the railway modelling companies.

There you have it. Cost is very low. A couple of plant mats, some glue, a little paint and sand and some free CDs. Even if you put five plants on each CD, the cost per terrain base won’t be more than about 25p.

You’ll also be surprised just how different your wargame table will look with these dotted around.

There are other things you can do with the plastic plants. We have stuck three or four to twigs mounted on old pennies to make exotic looking trees. We also found some seed pods which we dried and then hot glued a single plastic plant to the top to make credible palms. For SF and Pulp gamers, why not try some of the more outlandish plastic aquatic plants and dried flowers? Fake orchids make terrifying-looking carnivorous plants!

bFor insurance, I’ve bought myself an iPod. That

way, if the unthinkable happens, Neil and his timeless music will never be lost. I wonder just how long it will be before the wargamer comes up with some cunning scheme to utilise an iPod? Perhaps an interactive diorama of wartime Pathé News features being screened in a cinema? Why not – yesterday’s technology always seems to become tomorrow’s must-have terrain item!

ResourcesFor plastic aquatic plants www.fishandfins.co.uk; www.aquatics-online.co.ukFor plant mats www.petzoo.co.uk; www.buaquatics.com; www.sweetknowleaquatics.co.uk

Bamboo plants. These are based differently, just on a square of 2mm MDF. We bought a ‘chain’ of bamboo from a home décor store which provided us with 150 individual bamboo shoots. Three or four have been hot glued to

the centre of the MDF.

Twig and plant mat trees. Each of the plastic plants has literally been pushed onto the ‘branches’ of the twigs. Each twig has between three and

five of the plastic plants inserted into it. For stability, the twig has been hot glued to an old coin.

Seed pods with a plastic plant mat plant stuck to the top to make palm trees. The natural shape of the seed pod was ideal for the trunk.

These add a bit of extra colour to the Indian village featured in issue 14 of Battlegames.

The UK’s longest-running independent wargames podcastM

In-depth reviews of miniature wargaming rulesM

Reviews of figures and strategy boardgamesM

Interviews, discussion and much, much more...Available direct from

www.meeplesandminiatures.co.ukor subscribe via iTunes

Sam

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Battlegames 7

Thirty years on

I was whiling away a long train journey last week and, prompted by John Preece’s excellent Flanderkin

Serjeant blog, my thoughts turned to Peter Gilder. I don’t normally go in for heroes, but he is one of the very few I would consider worthy of the title. If I could distil the essence of my hobby, it would be peering, awestruck, into those cabinets at the Model Engineer exhibition, drinking in those wonderful shiny figures for hours, and once or twice, chatting to the great man himself. Inevitably, I wondered what he might be doing now were he still with us. As it is, his style is now frozen in time, mainly on old Miniature Wargames covers! Pulling into Eastbourne, I resolved to get onto the internet and seek some re-inspiration as soon as possible.

Which, in truth, was a bit of a non-event as there was virtually nothing there. A few pictures, a passing reference or two, and some eBay mentions. Hardly a fitting tribute to one of the hobby’s greatest luminaries. Criminally, he doesn’t even have an entry on Wikipedia. Puzzling. Roll forward one week, and there is a disturbance in The Force. I am scouting around the Web, looking for interesting sites (an increasingly fruitless task) and I come across a sculpting blog, which I had seen before. In hope more than expectation, I check out the links and come across Unfashionably Shiny. All of a sudden, my Gilder craving is satisfied.

Doug Crowther is still painting and basing in the old style, with white undercoat, Humbrols, oils and gloss varnish. He mainly does AWI with Hinchliffe figures. They are stunning. He also posts articles about Gilder, Battleground, and even ‘period’ painting guides. I was in hog heaven, and still am because Doug is updating regularly, posting items from his seemingly endless archive. I can easily say this is one of my favourite blogs already, and for

those of us motivated by the Great Man, it is a must-see. Brilliant, and just what blogging should be.

Around the showsAnother Winter has passed, this time living up to the name, and so gamers emerge, blinking, at the Spring shows. They, like me, are eager to spend some money, check out all the exciting new products and trends, and see what demonstration games are looking good.

My favourite so far has been the new Louis XIV range from Mark Copplestone. This is a promising launch, opening up a period of colourful uniforms, interesting wars and even some scope for imagi-nations. I also see some of them serving as privateers. I like the fact they have long coats which convey regimental colour superbly, and some of the flags are beautiful. We have infantry so far, with more to come, and cavalry not far off. The greens were impressive, but having seen them painted in the flesh I am totally sold. Yes, yes, I know it is another period. I’ll keep it low key!

The Perry plastic British are sitting on my desk, and are easily up to the standard of the French. That is, superb. I will be using these for bits and conversions needed in a little early war Sharp Practice project I have in mind. But as a man who really has ‘enough’ British Napoleonics (and can’t face doing Highlanders for a fourth time) I am even more excited by the announcement of Wars of the Roses as the next 28mm plastic project for the Twins. The initial greens look great, and if you read between the lines the figures will work for the wider historical period – so I am thinking Swiss! Again! The Plastic Revolution is moving forward very nicely, but I need some leg sets with gaiters please!

Italeri have released an excellent set of 20mm German motorcycles. I have bought a couple of boxes and they make up into super little models, in the new semi-hard plastic. The only drawback for me is that the figures are Afrika Korps based, so need a bit of conversion

to bring them back to Europe.And just to finish off, after all that

furore over War Glue, may I say that after several weeks usage, it is by far the best superglue I have ever used! I am completely serious when I say this – it sticks and holds superbly, is very strong and does not seem to ‘go off’. Shame it was so expensive. I am looking for an equivalent if you can suggest a manufacturer.

Basic plasticI was never cut out to be an investigative journo. Too weedy, for starters. But while I had suspicions, I really needed to know why some people embrace plastic while others won’t even allow it on radar. Or in some cases are downright hostile. I started asking questions, and carried on for a couple of months. Unlike those useless television ‘exposés’, I actually came up with some answers. Broadly, it comes down to a cocktail of snobbery (I can afford metal, so it is better); baggage (I started with Airfix, and I’m not going back); ignorance (all plastic is soft and won’t hold paint); investment (plastic won’t hold value if I sell on); and heft (I much prefer the weight/perceived quality of metal). I am only going to allow the last one, because it is undeniable (!), and because I have vowed never to sell a painted figure again so don’t consider depreciation.

But there is something else. While answers were surprisingly clear on the above, there was also a definite sense that some people were unhappy working with plastic. Personally, brought up on Airfix Magazine, Chris Ellis and Historex, I love it. If you convert, there is nothing better than hard plastic. I do understand others not enjoying sticking arms and heads on, but again that is personal taste. But then I encountered gamers who simply didn’t know the basics.

So, for those struggling, expect to see a step-by-step guide to cleaning, assembling and painting plastics in the pages of the next issue of this magazine, prepared by your Editor – also a long-term fan of plastics – with a little help from his friends.

Forward observerAn homage to Gilder, latest developments and overcoming plastiphobia

by Mike Siggins

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8 Battlegames

Most wargamers adhere to set scales for frontages, no matter what size of figures they play with. These scales give base widths for specified

numbers of men, and a ratio of number of figures to the frontage width according to troop type and the order in which they usually operated. We often calculate ranges and movement distances based upon these scales and even time (or moves) taken for formation changes dependent upon how far bases have to move.

However, most wargamers also ignore base depth with gleeful abandon – widthwise we see almost generic basing of a British Napoleonic infantry company at campaign strength of roughly 60 men in 2 ranks forming up with 2½ feet per man (30 men x 2½ feet = 75 ft/25yds) Most old timers who wrote the early rule systems established some sort of standard by default. They started with an innocuous but almost universal 100 yards of march = 10 inches on the table, because that was how we thought in those days, apart from Phil Barker that is, who actually used newfangled millimetres!

So we produced infantry bases 2½ inches wide with one figure mounted on them for each rank of 30 men who supposedly occupied those representational 25 yds of ground. In the days when nearly everyone doing horse and musket gaming fought Napoleonics, this led to the British being mounted two figures per base for their 60 men in two ranks, and the French having three for their companies of 90 men in three ranks. It seemed so obvious, and strangely even remained in use when 100 yards = 6 inches came along!

Nowadays, the 40mm base width apparently occupies a similar dominant position. However, to accommodate the figures, we also used bases about 1 inch deep! That means two ranks of men occupying 10 yds, that’s 30 feet from the chest of the front rank to the pack of the back/second rank. Because infantry lines seldom formed close

behind each other, the depth thing never really mattered.However, I maintain that the depth of a deployed artillery

battery actually does matter. How many times do we see guns in a firing line and troops marching across their rear to reinforce weak links or battered sections of the deployment? How often do we see these batteries re-laid to fire at 45 degrees to the line – or, upon occasions, take one move to re-lay at 90 degrees – the clever wargamer also having set up his models in staggered echelon so they can rotate upon a central pivot to fire left, forward, right or even to the rear if needed, and never mask each other. In answer to the genuine player’s somewhat quizzical, “Are you certain they did that?”, we are usually treated to, “So where does it say in the rules I can’t do it?”, closely followed by, “Can I help it if period battery commanders weren’t as good at deploying their guns as I am?”

But we really must ask, “What about all the kit?” Period artillery officers had to think about keeping powder away from the guns, and somewhere to place their teams and limbers, their ready-lockers and their caissons, general campaign wagons, A-frame crane, carriages and spare mounts; and even, if they were lucky enough to have it in the field with them, their forge; and the battery fodder wagons. Drill manuals through the ages are quite specific where each and every article of this equipment ought to be located while the guns were in action; and, contrary to popular opinion, it wasn’t usually very far away. They must be in the field and close enough to be used when required. Where would Ramsey have been at Fuentes d’Oñoro if his limbers had been safely behind the main army lines? Deployment varies from manual to manual and there are period and national differences, but if we resort once again to roughly average distances, we can do an easy calculation for artillery base sizes.

When basing gun models, we should be thinking of artillery sections of two guns, which was about standard for several periods – just group sections together for larger formations such as batteries, and group batteries for grand batteries. Napoleonic British need three sections

Talking wargaming1: Artillery and the tabletop

by Chris Scott

A British Battery in Trouble! A battery surrounded by French – three guns in echelon, the first firing to the left, the centre one firing forward and the third firing to its right. Miniatures from the author’s collection. Photographs by Richard Ellis.

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